Mr. Easop: The first thing I want to talk about is Veterans Day; often, we get caught up in the Orange Bubble, but we should be grateful to our veterans. (Round of Applause.) And also, we do have an exciting week ahead. We have USG elections, Hoodie Allen, and throughout the week, Restaurant Week. Also, the Princeton Tigers beat Yale last weekend, earning us the first bonfire since 2006! Moving forward, do we a motion to approve the minutes.

The motion passes.

Kevin Zhang standing in for Shawon Jackson.

Greg Smith standing in for Haebin Kim.

Carla Javier standing in for Deana Davoudiasl.

Elections Update

Mr. Dean: The elections are on, we’ve got candidates which I emailed out. Race for USG President, Vice President, Social Chair, and Senator. I’ve talked to you about the schedule already. The 2014 senators are unopposed. There are three people running for 2015 Senator. For 2016 Senator, there are nine candidates. Also, we should discuss whether the new freshman class referendum has a negative impact on people who run for senate. For example, if someone comes in 2nd or 3rd for a particular position, they think they have a chance of winning the Senate race. But if they come in 21 out of 30, then they may feel more demoralized.

Mr. Easop: I think when we publicize the votes, some people may be uncomfortable with public recognition of all the candidates.

SGRC Presentation

Mr. Ackerman: The first four groups are groups that will pass without much discussion. The fifth group is more complicated, because we don’t have a particular reason in our constitution that prevents us from disapproving them. But we have some reservations about them. However, unless you override their “approval,” they will be approved.

Mr. Easop: What are your concerns?

Mr. Ackerman: Yeah, the group is “FIELD” which encourages students to do field work and have a collaborative group that discusses it on campus. Our major reservation is that this is so academically-focused that most students will already get these opportunities.

Ms. Shen: I would show concern too for the lifetime of this group. Whatever they’re trying to foster, and I could envision myself getting a chance to discuss with this group. But once they graduate, who’s the leader because what’s their goal? I think it’s difficult to see someone really want to be a leader.

Mr. Kugelmass: I think we should be really flexible in letting students create groups, and hope they succeed.

Mr. Sharp: We may be giving them university resources and money, and if they’re just going to discontinue after this year, maybe the money would be a lost cause.

Mr. Kugelmass: P-Boards will only give them money if they have good proposals.

Mr. Ackerman: We’ve had a lot of groups go through that were passed under the philosophy of “If we don’t give them a chance, they’ll never prosper,” but we had to have a Student Groups “clean up committee.”

Buses to Yale Recap

Mr. Easop: The handout for Buses to Yale is a separate sheet, but we sold out 550 tickets to these buses, and it was great to see so much enthusiasm! On the day of, we had a total of 453 students on the buses (but I think most people bought tickets with the intention of coming home with us). In the future, should we request that people only buy tickets if they take both legs? The athletics committee helped us connect with other stakeholders, including the student events committee, to put the game on the Frist TVs. And also, Adi helped get in touch with the Princeton Club of Connecticut to publicize a tailgate. Also, in terms of publicity, we should a Facebook event, emails, and a poster. With the new USG website, we’ve started to have banners and having them posted in a central spot. And one of the cool things is that we collected pictures and videos so that we can put together a video and publicity for the bonfire. Finally, thank you to the ten bus captains who were there well before 7 AM. One number I’m waiting on is the total number of game tickets sold. Questions?

Mr. Ackerman: Is this something we’re looking to do in subsequent years, possibly to the Harvard game, or only when the bonfire is on the line?

Ms. Shen: We do want this to happen more often, but we need a mechanism to gage interest. It’s hard because we’ll get requests from sports teams and it’s so last minute, but the athletes do tend to know what the “big games” are.

Mr. Zhang: Typically the Harvard Basketball game sells out tickets a month in advance.

Mr. Ackerman: I think that it’s a bad idea that they can’t just buy a one-way ticket; for example, one of my friends met her parents there.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: Did we have students enquire about transportation for just one leg?

Mr. Easop: I think this is why it’s a useful question, because we did have a waitline for students in case there are open seats. But if those seats are filled on the return home, we’re in a bind. Not every bus was completely filled, like 52 of 55 people. And we had one bus that had 5 people. We did have an empty bus going up, but it could be filled up on return.

Mr. Ackerman: We also had a completely extra bus, that we weren’t charged for. We should keep that in mind.

Mr. Sharp: Many people were irritated that searching of items and taking away certain things (like alcohol) was unexpected, and they wanted to be aware of this.

Bonfire

Mr. Ramirez: Everyone should read the Princetonia website about the Bonfire, it has a lot of history. Like many Princeton traditions, some parts of the history are unclear, but at some point it got tied to our victories over Harvard and Yale. The last time it happened was in 2006, and before that in 1994. A neat tradition was that the freshmen used to walk around and pick up wood.

Ms. Wiley: [] Yale and Harvard student as offerings.

Mr. Ramirez: The current plans we have for this year is that the construction of the bonfire is done with student volunteers, in coordination with members of the carpenters shop. Each class will send volunteers to Cannon Green. Publicize this and let your peers know about this—you’ll have an opportunity to write your name and class year on a pallet. We’ll have specific times for each class year. A lot of people have been asking about “what else happens?” Basically, there will be a stage and various leaders from the campus community to speak about this. Last time, the representatives from the team of last bonfire will pass the torch to the current team. In 2006, the football team and band gathered around the Wilson-Butler area and marched, in mass, to Cannon Green. That’s a little bit about the program. We’re trying to determine if there’ll be food vendors, but definitely encourage your fellow students and alumni to attend. Also, with the volunteering aspect, we probably can’t have 5,200 undergrads help build the fire, but it’ll be great to have people there taking part and helping construct the fire. Last time, the program ran for 15 minutes, and the burning of the fire lasted 45 minutes to an hour. I’ll pass it over to Bruce to discuss timing.

Mr. Easop: So, I guess I wanted to start off saying that I couldn’t be more excited. Thinking about the goals of the event and USG, we like to connect students to students. So we want to make sure that we accommodate as many people as possible, so we want to be responsive to student interests. Yesterday, the football team told me that there final season game is on Saturday, so they want to be practicing a lot on Friday. So now the bonfire will be shifting to Saturday the 17th to 7PM. This means it will follow their Dartmouth game, and the building of the bonfire will take place before the game which can get people pumped up for the game. Then after the game, this will be a celebration of their performance over all. Also, more alumni will be able to make this game; if it were at 5:30 on a Friday night, most alumni couldn’t take time off from work. This really responds to the interests of people who really want to celebrate this. Hopefully we can make it the biggest and best event possible!

Mr. Wagstaff: The Saturday game is their battle for the Ivy League Championship.

Mr. Sharp: This is a tradition, so we should examine the reasons this was on a Friday night originally.

Mr. Easop: It was on Friday in 2006, but before that, it wasn’t the case. In the nineties, they actually had it at the start of Thanksgiving week, which they found had low turnout and people had already gone home. The football team said it was important to them to have it on Saturday, and we should really listen to them.

Mr. Sharp: It would be nice to have groups of friends to create pallets together, because a lot of friends span class years.

Mr. Easop: Last note, keep in mind that a funding request (online) will happen this week. Expect more info this week!

Hoodie Allen

Mr. Wagstaff: The Hoodie Allen show is on Friday night, and it’s still going to be happening. Doors will be open at 8:30 PM, and the show will start at 9:00 PM. There is a vicious rumor that tickets have been sold out, but this is not true. There are some remaining. If you take your friends’ proxes with you (up to four!) you can buy them with you. Just a shout-out to everyone who worked on this project! We are selling to the public as well!

Deans Date Brainstorm

Mr. Wagstaff: Deans Date! I think Carla should guide us through the first part.

Ms. Javier: We’re thinking of changing up the model from last year, so it’s more of a social experience. We were thinking of not getting food from outside vendors, and instead, doing something with dining services. Giveaways are always appreciated, so we have two separate themes. We were thinking of “wintery” things, like scarves, floppy ear hats, mittens, etc. Other things that have been suggested include an “open night” or live DJ, so we have something to do besides just eat food!

Ms. Clifton: Last year, Quipfire was there, and they were great.

Mr. Kugelmass: In terms of the giveaway, we should do an article of clothing as opposed to electronics. When we buy cheap headphones, they’re usually “throwaways”

Ms. Smith: For food, I think it’d be better to have outside vendors, just because of the quality of food. My experience with dining services barbeques is always pretty negative.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I think good finger food is good. For the giveaways, I like the idea of winter clothes that are practical (as opposed to fleece throws).

Mr. Easop: One idea: if there were two or three that were within our price range, we should get student feedback on what they want.

Mr. Mancenon: Maybe we should get more of something cheap so more students can get one.

Mr. Wagstaff: If you’d like to attend any of our meetings, please do. Then, we’re trying to consider this new element, which would be the night element. We want to introduce the concept of a silent disco, and we’d want to work with alcohol initiative to offer a way for students to do something, and at least, in some way, if they have been drinking we want to offer them something to put in their stomachs to make it through the night. This would be a campus event—they would have headphones listening to the same thing so it’s quiet to the outside community, but it’s a full on party. We want cheapish but recognizable acts, and we’d like to do it in front of Nassau Hall. Otherwise, we’d do it in a contained quad. We’re looking from 9:30 PM to midnight, but it’s an idea on the table. Is this something the USG should be pursuing?

Mr. Sharp: I thought it was that you gave people a playlist and everyone hits go at the same time. But you’re talking about it as a radio single?

Mr. Wagstaff: No, we’d connect them to a performer. It’s not very expensive, but it’d be very exciting!

Mr. Kugelmass: Most students have Smartphones, so maybe it could be done through the internet?

Mr. Cook: This sounds awesome! As far as locations, have you thought about East Pyne at all? If this is a segway to the street, it may be a better location.

Mr. Easop: In terms of the expense, would be just be keeping the headphones?

Mr. Wagstaff: It’s a rental and a production type thing. They don’t do it much in the US, but they use it for Electric Zoo. They’ll do lights and headphones, and it comes up to be around $5 per person. It’s not too terrible a deal.

Ms. Byrne: I would recommend if these were rentals, then we should do it in a quad so you can get them back…

Tiger Apps Homepage

Mr. Chen: The idea is that we have different categories of apps that make it easy to search for, and a description of each. So you can check it out. As you saw, there was an email sent out of the previous IT website, so this is something we put up today/yesterday. If you have any feedback, I’d love suggestions.

Ms. Shen: Does this replace the iPad?

Mr. Chen: Yes. I was hoping this would be more…useful.

Mr. Martens: I thought it was weird because if you were using it on a mobile phone, it was an iPhone inside an iPhone…

Mr. Chen: I kind of preserved it up there (upper right hand corner). Also we can add back the links to the “useful websites.”

Mr. Easop: Do you think it’ll be up and ready to send out to students this week?

Ms. Bui: Are they going to be different logos for each thing?

Budget Update

Ms. Cartwright: These are the expenses from October, mostly they’re small little things. Just looking ahead, we spent a lot in November, and so I guess that’s the Yale Buses, Bonfire, Dean’s Date, but we’re on track!

Mr. Stolzenberg: Can we talk about copier charges?

Ms. Cartwright: I guess we could expect another $2,000 for charges?

Mr. Kugelmass: Can we limit the number of color copies for student groups?

Mr. Easop: We want to have each student group have a code for the printer, so if any group goes over, then your group has to cover the cost. It’ll keep individual students from printing.

Ms. Cartwright: I think the problem is members from USG using it…

Mr. Kugelmass: Maybe we should ask student groups to use P-boards grant for their funding, and otherwise they get a small budget from us for it?

Ms. Cartwright: Projects Board doesn’t fund advertising

Mr. Sharp: Maybe we can be a printing service, and just start charging people, which would be cheaper for us.

Ms. Cartwright: I think it’s worth it to provide printing in our budget

Mr. Kugelmass: If we give people a code, then they can have a quota for the semester (not per event), and if they go over, we should charge them.

Mr. Easop: Installing the code will take some time, but we should check in.

Ms. Byrne: At printing clusters, you just use your netid, but each student groups have their own netid’s…

Mr. Easop: We were just going to use the last four numbers of the student group numbers.

Agenda Setting

Mr. Easop: We want to talk about the Thanksgiving Day focus groups, keep pumping it up with people you know!!

Ms. Shen: Is the main alternative to remove fall break and make thanksgiving break longer?

Mr. Easop: There are multiple alternatives.

Mr. Shen: As an RCA, we have people coming to our meetings to discuss this.

Mr. Easop: The USG focus groups are one component, but Dean Smith is also reaching out to Residential Colleges which the RCA are part of.

Mr. Easop: Haebin’s Food Committee and Holiday Lights Project would like to present.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: CPUC recap.

Mr. Kugelmass: Everyone ought to come to the CPUC meeting tomorrow.

Mr. Easop; Benny- recap of Hoodie Allen the week after?

Mr. Okuda Lim: Should we quickly recap the bonfire and discuss best practices for institutional memory?

Mr. Easop: Since we’re not meeting after Thanksgiving, we’ll send out another reminder if something else pops up.